The Value Production Standings: 2005-2007

It was all the way back in August of 2006 that we launched this long series, and now we’re finally completing the journey to the present day. Along the way, we’ve examined the competitive status of each major league franchise’s farm system production in each of the following periods:

For a review of our methodology, please see the References and Resources section below.

Here’s the key to the figures we’ve been examining:

WSP = Win Shares Produced: the total of major league Win Shares produced that season by all players credited to the organization Lg. WSP = League Win Shares Produced: the percentage of the league total of WSP credited to the organizationMLB WSP = Major league baseball Win Shares Produced: the percentage of the MLB-wide total of WSP credited to the organizationW = Wins: the actual win total of the team that seasonLg. W = League Wins: the percentage of the league win total won by the teamW% – WSP% = League Wins minus League Win Shares Produced: a measure of how much better or worse a team actually performed than the league-wide value produced by its organization Avg WSP = Average Win Shares Produced: the average WSP of the teams in a given division or league%MLB Avg = Percentage of the major league baseball average: how the average WSP for a given division or league compares with the overall major league average

Colorado had long been a franchise that was, shall we say, not noted for shrewd executive decision-making. After coming into existence in 1993, the Rockies had found some early success: They’d been a box-office smash from the get-go, leading the National League in attendance in each of their first seven seasons, and under GM Bob Gebhard they’d put a competitive team on the field for a few years in the mid-to-late 1990s.

But they’d been unable to convert their enormous revenue resources into a sustained program of on-field success, and among their organizational failings was an apparent inability to understand the nature of the playing conditions their mile-high home created. Over and over, the organization seemed to be fooled by altitude-inflated numbers into thinking it had a better-hitting ball club than it did.

By the 2000s, the bloom was off the rose. Denver fans tired of the mediocrity, and attendance dramatically waned. Dan O’Dowd took over as GM in late 1999, and for several seasons he seemed almost comically incapable of making headway. O’Dowd spent vast sums on high-profile free agent busts in pitchers Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle and he announced a new master strategy about every three months.

In general, he appeared eager to exploit high elevation as an excuse instead of acknowledging that the Rockies weren’t winning because they simply hadn’t done a good job of amassing and deploying talent. Under O’Dowd, through 2005 the Rockies had won, in succession, 82, 73, 73, 74, 68 and 67 games; worse than getting nowhere, the Rockies seemed to be slowly moving backwards.

But underneath that dismal surface, O’Dowd had been doing one thing extremely well. His executive team (in particular, scouting and farm system directors Bill Schmidt, Bill Geivett and Marc Gustafson) had taken the nascent farm system created by Gebhard and built on it with great skill.

In 2005, the Rockies were a loser, in last place in the NL West and in 14th among the 16 NL teams in attendance. But in value production, for the first time they led the NL West. The ball club that struggled in 2005 did so while providing space for outstanding young system-produced talent to develop, including outfielders Matt Holliday and Brad Hawpe, third baseman Garrett Atkins and pitchers Jeff Francis and Aaron Cook. It wasn’t yet obvious, but the foundation of the 2007 National League champions was being poured.

For a decade, the National League East Division had presented a curious juxtaposition. The Montreal Expos, recently relocated to Washington and re-christened the Nationals, had dominated in value production, leading the division in WSP every season since 1992. But their inability to retain the best of their talent in the face of free agent defections rendered them chronically noncompetitive on the field; they hadn’t been a serious contender since 1996, and their 71-91, last-place performance of 2006 was typical.

Meanwhile the Atlanta Braves had been phenomenally dominant on the field, winning the division title every year since 1995, after having finished second to the Expos in ’94. Yet the Braves accomplished this extraordinary success with good-but-not-great farm production.

They had long featured a core of system-produced stars, most notably third baseman-outfielder Chipper Jones, center fielder Andruw Jones, and pitcher Tom Glavine, but their championship status had been achieved primarily through the tremendous work of GM John Schuerholz in filling nearly every hole with the just the right free agent signing, trade acquisition, or scrap-heap scavenge, as well as the equally tremendous skill of field manager Bobby Cox and pitching coach Leo Mazzone in getting the very most out of the resources at hand.

But in 2006, two unexpected things occurred: At last, the Braves nosed ahead of the Nationals in organizational value production, yet simultaneously Atlanta failed to present a winning ball club for the first time since 1990, struggling in at 79-83. This Braves team still retained the Jones boys as veteran stars, and they were now joined by younger system-produced standouts in catcher Brian McCann, second baseman Marcus Giles and first baseman Adam LaRoche, but they were unable to mount a sufficient supporting cast around them, especially in the pitching staff—perhaps significantly, with Mazzone having now departed.

The American League East has been widely noted for displaying an extraordinary degree of competitive stability. Since the Devil Rays were hatched in 1998, every season the division’s standings, with minimal exceptions, have been (1) New York, (2) Boston, (3) Toronto, (4) Baltimore and (5) Tampa Bay. Through this period, the value production of the AL East has been remarkably stable as well, with the Blue Jays virtually always on top, then the Yankees and the Red Sox, and then the Orioles and Devil Rays trailing in the distance.

None among standout middle infielders Michael Young (Rangers), Orlando Hudson (Diamondbacks) and Felipe Lopez (Nationals) was over 30 in the 2007 season, but all three were among the latest bountiful cohort that Toronto hasn’t adequately leveraged. Without the financial resources to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox in payroll, the Blue Jays haven’t been a serious contender since the early 1990s, despite continuously pumping from a talent well that neither the Yankees nor Red Sox has been able to match.

In contrast, the standings in the AL Central have been topsy-turvy, producing four different post-season qualifiers in the past three years, and with all the division’s winners having experienced hard times as well in recent seasons. Yet meanwhile, the division’s value production picture has been rather static, with the Cleveland Indians dominating the top spot, leading in WSP in 10 of the past 11 years.

The Arizona Diamondbacks achieved extraordinarily immediate success, reaching the postseason three times in their first five seasons while featuring a roster studded with high-priced free agent veterans. But the morning after that party was a harsh one, with the D-backs collapsing into a 51-111 heap in 2004.

While the Giants’ and Padres’ systems remain quite unimpressive, the remarkable young talent emerging not only in Arizona and Colorado, but also now from the Los Angeles Dodgers suggests that the National League West, long the weak sister in value production, may be poised for an era of WSP leadership.

Meanwhile, just what in the world has happened to the farm system of the Cincinnati Reds? One has to look back all the way to the Kansas City Athletics of the late 1950s/early 1960s to find a non-expansion franchise with a talent well as dry as that of the 2007 Reds. Just two players (outfielders Adam Dunn and Austin Kearns, with 21 Win Shares apiece) accounted for more than half of Cincinnati’s extremely meager organizational production this season.

Methodology

First, we identify every player in the major leagues each season with at least five career Win Shares. Then we identify which major league organization was responsible for originally signing and developing that player (or perhaps not originally signing him, but clearly being the organization most responsible for developing him). Finally, we credit every season’s production of major league Win Shares by that player to that organization, regardless of whether he actually played that season for that organization.

Sometimes it’s impossible to assign a player to one organization. Lots of players were signed by one team, but then acquired by another organization while still young minor leaguers. For such players, we assign half-credit to each of the two organizations (and in a few cases, we assign one-third-credit to each of three organizations).

In this era, a non-insignificant number of players aren’t the products of any major league team’s farm system, having been purchased or signed as free agents from independent teams, either in the Mexican League, the Northern League, or the Japanese Leagues. The Win Shares of such players aren’t counted in this analysis.